CD CORNER : Increasing the Hank Williams Collection

PolyGram Records may have been slow in reaching into its vaults to release its landmark Hank Williams material in CD, but the company is now moving at full speed on the Williams catalogue.

The first Williams CD collection, released last summer, was a two-disc package that contained the late singer’s 40 greatest hits, including “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Jambalaya.”

The just-released albums, “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but Time” and “Lovesick Blues,” are the first offerings in an eight-volume series that will make available in chronological order all of the studio recordings of country music’s most influential figure, as well as some live and other assorted tracks.

The 57-minute first volume covers a five-month period starting in 1946, including his breakthrough single “Move It on Over” and his gospel standard “I Saw the Light,” plus versions of such non-Williams tunes as Bob Nolan’s “Cool Water” and Jimmie Work’s “Tennessee Border.” The “Lovesick Blues” volume follows Williams’ career through December, 1948.

PolyGram’s Bill Levenson said that the remaining Williams volumes will be released at the rate of one every two months.

MORE JERRY LEE LEWIS: PolyGram has also released a three-volume CD series chronicling an often neglected period in the career of another American classic, rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis.

Though Lewis did his most celebrated rock sessions for Memphis’ Sun Records in the 1950s, he also recorded some excellent rock, gospel and, especially, country material in the ‘60s and ‘70s for PolyGram’s Mercury and Smash labels.

Volume 1 of “Jerry Lee Lewis/Killer/The Mercury Years” covers the period 1963 to 1968, while Volume 2 includes recordings between 1969 and 1972. Volume 3 follows Lewis until 1977, when he switched to Elektra Records. All three volumes run about one hour.

While the series presents highlights of Lewis’ PolyGram tenure and offers several tracks previously unreleased in this country, the three volumes are no substitute for some of the original Smash albums.

Lewis’ “The Greatest Live Show on Earth,” from 1964, remains one of the great live rock albums ever made, while three of his country albums are musts: volumes 1 and 2 of “Jerry Lee Lewis Sings the Country Music Hall of Fame,” both from 1969, and “The Best of Jerry Lee Lewis/1968-1970.”

IN THE CD BUDGET BINS: Recent budget or midline reissues include Bob Dylan’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” score and “Self Portrait,” the Eagles’ “Live,” Al Green’s “Call Me,” Merle Haggard’s “The Epic Collection,” the Monkees’ “Headquarters” and “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.,” the Temptations’ “Live at the Copa” and four Barbra Streisand albums: “The Barbra Streisand Album,” “The Second Album,” “The Third Album” and “Je M’Appelle Barbra.”